May 2008

Try This at Home

Let me try a little test with you. I’ll ask you a question, and you answer within 5 seconds. The point is to see how different your first reaction is to the answer you eventually settle on.

Here’s the setup. Imagine a baby born today, who ends up living to the age of 100. Now think about the course of that baby’s hundred years on earth, and answer the following question in five seconds. No cheating. Five seconds.

Question: During that baby’s 100 years of life, how many people will die?

Go.

Don’t read on until you have your answer.

I’ll bet your answer was somewhere in the millions.

There are 6 billion people on earth right now, and virtually all of them will die in the next hundred years. Add to that the several billion who will be born during the baby’s life and not be so lucky to live to old age. I think an estimate of 10 billion deaths is entirely reasonable. And that’s if things go well. The worst case is probably 20 billion people.

Comments

Honestly my answer was "No idea, but it'll be a heck of a lot". I'm not sure if 10 billion would die in a person's lifetime - at least 6 billion, sure - but we don't know how large the earth's population will get in the future, and there are signs that it will stabilize a bit after 10 billion.

Well, I came up with "billions". I won't claim to have gotten the exact answer like some commenters. (I'm a bit skeptical of their claims, but I figure they're also actually likely to be a self-selecting group, as they would take pride in their achievement if they did in fact come up with the correct answer in 5 seconds.)

Thiago,
do you realize that the World does not finish in America?
May be there are not x people in America, but, what about those countries South of Rio Grande, on the other side of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans?
You know that the World exists over there? You know that some "human beings" live and die over there?

Great...My immediate answer was "one heck of a lot", then I read over the question after, and in 100 years I knew there were 6 billion on the earth and they would all die within that, and then your part the unlucky ones who won't live to that old age. Very great post, I'll try this on my friends :D

What popped into my head was "about 99.99% of everybody on Earth"...an actual figure didn't even beging to occur to me.

This reminds me of a joke I heard long ago...'How many dead people are there in that cemetary back there' [my wise-ass uncle asked me this as we were driving along a country road]. I looked back and tried to make a numerical guess based on the number of headstones. When I said 'A few hundred', he cocked an eye at me and said 'I figure that they're all dead..." Big laugh.

In five seconds I was able to think to myself, "Huh, does he mean people that the baby knows or everyone on earth? I bet he means on earth. Current pop is about 6 billion and I don't have time to make growth projections so maybe 10 billion." Heh.

Oh wow. And I only got a mere 10.000 in to the five second frame. Seems like I´m a somewhat optimistic type of dude.

And of course I knew instantly that tenthousand was horribly wrong, to low and all that. But its fascinating that my mind as an answer instantly dropped out "10.000!" as if the number was prewritten somewhere in the subconscious part of my brain and only waiting for a release.

Forgive me people who may have already pointed this out as I'm in a hurry and did not read repliesd but Scott...

Didn't you suggest that immortality was only so far away and not as unattainable as many of us believe?

True it may only be available to the ultra-rich and therefore not achieve customer penetration to the merely moderately wealthy plebians like myself, but is it not one of your own considerations you had not considered?

For the record I said 2 billion. And you are quite correct with your answer and your logic is sound, it really demonstrates the inadequacies of trying to answer a calculated question in a small amount of time. I'll leave that to politicians and CEOs with good hair.

Based on a rough calculation of what is said below. I guessed 12 billion.
With more time I came up with this:
I figure 100 years is roughly 3 to 4 generations. people live to be about 3 generations old (on average) so if the total earth population stayed constant, you could expect 3 generations to die and 3 to be born. 3*6.5 billion = 19.5 billion. Pretty close to Scott's final guess.